README.md

Solar Concentrator Simulator

Before any hardware construction, a simulator was developed using Panda3D, a Python game engine.

This simulator can simulate between 1 and 10 panels of different sizes, immersed in an environment including some background elements.

Its simple user interface allows to configure:

• the global position on the planet
• the date and time
• the size and position of the background elements
• the number, size and position of the panels in the grid

From such a given configuration, it simulates the reflection of solar rays (taking into account the shadows) and estimates the corresponding power received on the target area.

Note

This simulator has been developed iteratively, its source code is not very clean, its user interface can be slow and laggy.

From the provided docker container, the simulator can be started with the following command:

cd /solar_concentrator/software/simulator/sources

python3 solar_concentrator_simulator.py

A remote control allows to send configuration values and get estimated output values from an external Python program. Any parameter that can be set manually can also be set remotely with this remote_control.

This is used for two purposes :

• end_to_end_test.py starts the simulator, sets some configuration values and checks if the estimated power value is as expected
• time_walker_recorder.py uses the current simulator configuration and estimates the received solar power for a given time range

The following animation is a screenshot of the solar concentrator: